


This is what love does to you. This is how it always ends.

by Lenore



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Betrayal, Case Fic, Challenge Response, Community: undermistletoe, Curses, Delusions, Ghosts, Haunted Houses, Non-Graphic Violence, Possession, Precognition, Substitution, Witchcraft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-17
Updated: 2011-08-17
Packaged: 2017-10-22 18:28:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/241183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lenore/pseuds/Lenore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While investigating a house with a sad history, Sam and Dean find that the past is never really over.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This is what love does to you. This is how it always ends.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [](http://undermistletoe.livejournal.com/profile)[**undermistletoe**](http://undermistletoe.livejournal.com/) for the prompt, "Back from the dead or plane crash." Big thanks to [](http://oxoniensis.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://oxoniensis.livejournal.com/)**oxoniensis** for beta reading!

"You didn't do bad by her, Sammy. Not bad at all."

The sun was just cracking the horizon, and they'd already been on the road for hours, not speeding toward anything, just trying to put the image of Gordon with his head torn off a little more firmly in the rearview mirror. The Impala purred along, and every now and then Dean would rub his hand over the dashboard, just a hint of a smile.

Sam nodded absently. _You don't make a bad teacher_. He leafed through his stack of newspaper articles, stuff he'd printed from Internet forums, scribbled notes from Bobby, frowning.

"You're looking all earnest over there. You got something for me?"

"Wyatteville, Illinois. Six murder-suicides at the same address going back to the seventies, wife always strangled, husband with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head."

"Sounds like one bad house. We should check it out." Dean did a screeching U-turn in the middle of the road.

Sam shot him a dirty look.

Dean grinned. "Illinois's the other way, dude."

* * *

The house at 102 Copper Lane looked like all the others on the block—dark brick, wide porch, tin roof—although less lovingly cared for. Paint was peeling on the wooden banister, the grass in serious need of a weed whacker, front walk crumbling in places. A for-sale sign was pitched in the lawn, a little rusty around the edges, as if it had been there for some time.

"Looks like word's got out about our little death trap," Dean said as they climbed the front stairs.

Sam did the lock-picking honors, and Dean drew his gun, an unnecessary precaution. Inside, the rooms were empty, quiet, dust floating in the air. Dean put the gun away and pulled out the EMF reader.

"Anything?" Sam asked.

Dean shook his head. "Maybe all the shit that's gone down here is—I don't know, just the worst coincidence ever?"

Sam half shrugged. "I guess it's possible, but—"

  
_Sam, did you bring in the last of the boxes?_

Sam struggles with two overflowing cartons of kitchen stuff, barely managing to plunk them down on the sofa before every dish they own goes crashing to the floor. "Just a few more, Dad."

"Where do you want these?" A boy stands in the doorway, sandy-haired and hazel-eyed, smiling in a way that boys don't usually smile at Sam. He hefts the stack of boxes as if they weigh nothing.

Sam swallows nervously. "Um—anywhere is good."

The boy sets them down and straightens up, and then all his attention is focused on Sam. "I'm Dean." He sticks out his hand. "I live down the street."

Sam mumbles his name, hoping his palm isn't as sweaty as it feels. "Thanks, uh, for the help."

Dean grins. "Only neighborly, right?"

"I guess." Sam drops his gaze, feeling the heat in his cheeks.

He expects that Dean will toss off a casual "see ya" and go, but Dean stays put. He's looking at Sam, _staring_ , and for the first time in his life, Sam feels truly seen.

"Sam," his father calls out from the kitchen, "have you found the pots yet?"

_Sam? Sam!_

  
The ground was cold and damp under his butt. Dean crouched down beside him looking pissed as hell, which meant whatever just happened had scared the shit out of him.

"What the fuck was that?" Dean demanded. "Suddenly, you were all checked out on me, and I had to drag your butt out of there."

Sam shook his head, still fuzzy. "I don't know. I just wasn't myself. Except—I was." He frowned, trying and failing to make sense of that.

Dean held out his hand and hauled Sam to his feet. "Okay, so no more trips into the funhouse until we've figured out what the hell's going on. As much as I hate to say this, looks like it's library time."

Sam smiled shakily. "You're quite the research junkie there, Dean."

Dean smirked, and Sam let out his breath, on solid ground again.

The Wyatteville Public Library looked like every other library in the Midwest, a stolid early century fortress of learning, built by Carnegie dollars. The microfiche room was all the way in the back, tiny, overheated. Sam and Dean settled next to each other and flicked back through thirty years of history, wars and politics and personal tragedies blaring out from the pages of the _Wyatteville Daily Record_.

"Got it!" Dean sat up straighter. "October 23rd, 1977. _Local high school student Laura Brewster found hanging from a tree. Suicide suspected._ Guess where she lived?"

"102 Copper Lane," Sam said.

Dean got to his feet, pulling his jacket from the back of the chair. "Says she's buried in Rosehall cemetery. I love it when reporters make our job easier."

They stopped at the first diner they came to, waiting out the last of the daylight over burgers and onion rings, and then drove over to Rosehall. Salting and burning bones was just another day at the office, and they worked without talking, without needing to, digging and pouring out the salt and splashing gasoline. Dean lit the match and flicked it into the grave, and they lingered a moment, watching the orange flames leap up.

Back at the motel, Sam fell asleep quickly, but his dreams were restless. He found himself at 102 Copper Lane again, the rooms empty one moment, the next filled with furniture from decades ago, plaid couch and beanbag chairs and avocado green carpeting. An overwhelming feeling of belonging swamped him, as if the shoe treads in the carpet were his, the smiley face pencil on the desk still warm from his hand.

In the morning, Dean cheerfully set to work packing his bag, whistling to himself. "Where to next, Sammy? I'm thinking someplace sunny."

"Um, Dean?"

Dean glanced up, and blinked disbelievingly, and then threw up his hands. "Aw, come on. We took care of it already."

"I just need to make sure." Sam set his jaw stubbornly.

Dean let out a big, put-upon sigh. "Have I mentioned lately that you're a pain in my ass?"

Ten minutes later, they pulled up in front of the house.

"I'll be quick." Sam slid out of the car.

The house seemed no different, as silent and dusty, and Sam didn't really know what he was looking for. Just…something. His dream from the night before swam behind his eyes, an old recliner by the fireplace, a carnival glass candy dish on the cocktail table, a macramé planter hanging at the window with a scraggly asparagus fern drooping from it. Sam lingered at the staircase, staring up at the second floor landing.

He started up the stairs, and the front door opened behind him.

"Sam! Where do you think you're going?" Dean sounded so far away.

  
_At the end of the hall is a room with lavender walls and a white eyelet bedspread, a bookshelf filled with worn paperback novels and a collection of snow globes. His room._

The curtains lift on the breeze, but even with the window open, the room is still August-hot, the smell of cut grass and honeysuckle drifting in with the wind.

Sam's eyes are closed, have been since they took their clothes off, not because he doesn't want to see, but because it's all just so much. Dean's body, sweat slick, slides against him as they kiss, as Dean moves inside him. The air simmers in Sam's lungs, and it doesn't seem to matter that they've done this almost every day since they met. Sam's skin feels as if it's made of wonder.

"God," Dean groans, his voice rough in the back of his throat.

Sam clings, fingernails pressing into flesh. "Please!"

He sees a violent shade of blue when he comes, a color that doesn't exist in nature, and Sam still can't believe that this is sex, what he's been warned about in whispers since he hit puberty. _It can ruin you, if you're not careful_.

Dean lies beside him and catches his breath, their arms just barely touching. Then he pushes up onto one elbow, leans over, kisses Sam, so deep and sweet that Sam can't help smiling.

Dean smiles back and slips out of bed, grabs his pants off the chair where he threw them. Sam curls onto his side, watching Dean get dressed, lazy and flushed and like gravity can't quite touch him.

It's his happiness that makes him forget. "Will I see you at school tomorrow?"

Dean goes still, and Sam's throat clenches up, and he wishes, wishes that he could take it back.

"We talked about this," Dean says quietly.

Shirtless and standing by the window, the heavy gold of the last light falls across him, limns the muscles of his arms, his chest, the sharp planes of his face.

Sam makes himself look away. "Yeah."

Dean shifts uneasily. "It's just—the people I hang out with. They wouldn't understand."

Sam nods.

Dean swings a leg through the open window. Hesitates. "Tomorrow after school?"

He smiles hopefully, and it makes his eyes crinkle at the corners. Sam's stomach does a funny little flip flop.

He smiles back.

* * *

"…forget being late to Mr. Christianson's class. That's an automatic detention. He has this thing about punctuality. Oh, and don't worry too much about paying attention in trig. Miss Wimbley's tests come from the problem sets in the back of the book. It's a good thing you're taking Spanish instead of Latin. Old Mrs. Daniels is so mean…" Constance chatters on, giving Sam the lowdown on every teacher in school, her curly red ponytail bobbing in time to her litany.

The first day of classes, she'd just materialized at his locker. "So you're the new kid, huh?" Sam hasn't been able to shake her since. In the mornings, she waits at the end of his block to walk with him to school, and tracks him down after fourth period so they can sit together at lunch, and tags along on the way home, lingering on the porch until he says, "I'd better go in. My dad doesn't like me having people over when he's not here."

They cross the street, and off to the left is the student parking lot, the epicenter of Wyatteville High's social life in those stray minutes before and after school. Kids cluster around, leaning against cars, the rise and fall of voices and jokes and _oh, come on, there's no way that was a foul in Friday's game, the refs hate me_ , loud snorts of laughter, all with an edge to it, because any moment the bell is going to ring, and the dreary business of paying attention to calculus and geography will interrupt what's really important.

"Yeah, steer clear of there," Constance says, following Sam's gaze. "Only 'cool kids' allowed." Her voice drips bitterness, and Sam knows her life as well as he knows his own, huddling alone in the halls, and never being invited to parties, and watching other people's conversations with a gut-twisting mix of envy and wonder, year after year feeling like your face is pressed against the glass.

Dean is right there in the middle of everything, of course, casually sprawled on the hood of his Camaro, his friends circled around, other guys from the football team in their letterman's jackets, girls with long hair falling straight down their backs, all nameless blondes to Sam, except for Starla Ashby, the head cheerleader, with her short skirts and laughing mouth and wide blue eyes that always seem to be set on Dean.

The bell rings, and Dean and his group head inside. Sam stays rooted to the spot, and Dean has to walk right past him. Their arms almost touch, but there's not so much as a flicker across Dean's face, as if Sam is invisible to him now. _You knew this was how it was going to be,_ Sam reminds himself, but that doesn't stop him from following Dean with his eyes all the way into the building.

"Dream on," Constance tells him.

She stomps off, leaving Sam alone with his wistfulness.

Constance avoids him at lunch, and he expects the same after school, but apparently all is forgiven by then. She corners him at his locker and falls in with him for the walk home.

"I don't know why Miss Almarode has to be so mean. School just started! Why do we have to write a paper already? I mean, seriously. What am I supposed to say about the Puritans?"

At Sam's house, they sit on the front steps, and Constance keeps up both ends of the conversation. Sam doesn't listen, but the steady cadence of her voice keeps him from thinking much of anything, and that's oddly soothing.

Finally, he glances down at his watch. "I have to go fix supper."

He gets to his feet, turns his back quickly, in case there's any disappointment to be seen on Constance's face.

In the kitchen, he searches through cabinets, opens the freezer, and in the end takes out a Banquet frozen turkey and gravy dinner, cans of vegetables. He has vague memories of his mother and warm kitchen smells, a picture in his head like a faded snapshot of a chocolate birthday cake she made for him, three candles sparkling on top of it. _Your mama was an old-fashioned cook, everything from scratch, and, boy, did it taste good,_ Sam's father likes to reminisce.

Sam closes his eyes and imagines standing at her side in the kitchen, watching, learning, as she levels off a cup of flour, takes the rolling pin from the drawer. _Don't work the dough too hard, Sam. That's the secret of making a good pie crust._ But he was too little for that, and then she was gone, and it's been TV dinners and spaghetti-o's ever since, the taste of grief. _We get by just fine, honey, just fine,_ his father says out of the blue sometimes, eyes catching Sam's, like if they both just believe it'll have to be true, a fragile kind of magic.

Sam's dad gets home in time to set the table. He washes up at the sink first, rolling up the sleeves of his new work shirt, with the Coca-cola logo on the back and a patch with his name above the pocket. He hums under his breath as he soaps up his hands, and Sam guesses his first day at the bottling plant went well enough.

He asks as much when they sit down to dinner.

His dad nods. "Not too hard on the back, which I was glad of. Boss seems like a decent enough guy. Says there's room for advancement if I'm not afraid to work." He hesitates. "How was school?"

Sam picks at his turkey. "Good."

"So you're fitting in and everything?" His fork hangs suspended in the air, and the way he's looking at Sam makes it clear what he's really asking. _Are we going to be able to stay here? Is it going to be different this time?_

Sam struggles to say something reassuring. "It's nice here." He thinks of Dean, and then there's real warmth behind the words.

When they're finished, his dad stacks up the plates. "I've got this. Only fair. You did the cooking."

They have this same conversation every night, and Sam surprises his father with a quick kiss to the cheek. "I'm glad the job's okay. I'm going to go do my homework."

"Okay, honey." He smiles. "You know how I love to see those A's."

Dean is already there when Sam gets to his room, sitting at the foot of the bed, fidgeting, looking a little sheepish. "I didn't know if you were coming."

Sam takes a step closer, feeling strangely shy. "My dad just got talkative at dinner."

They fall into each other, like the first time, like every time. Dean's hand slides into Sam's hair, and their mouths move against each other, Dean touching his tongue to Sam's lip. They undress, struggling with finicky zippers and buttons. "You're amazing," Dean breathes against Sam's cheek, and Sam does a backwards shuffle to the bed, pulling Dean with him.

Dean lies on top of him, a comforting weight, brushing soft kisses to Sam's neck while he fumbles with a condom. The surprise of sex just doesn't stop, no matter how many times they do this, the rush and burn of being entered, filled, taken over. Dean trembles, and Sam kisses him, and they start to move together. Sam's hands drift over Dean's back, feeling the flex and play of muscles. He digs his fingers in, face pressed to Dean's neck, warm and sweating. Sam holds on, holds _tight_ until he comes and Dean comes, and they're both weak and panting.

Dean rolls off him, smiling and dazed, absently reaching out to brush the hair from Sam's face. Simple little gesture, sweet and trusting, and all the things Sam hasn't said make his throat hurt.

"Dean, there's something you should—I'm—" His eyes prickle with sudden heat, and _not like other people_ just won't come out.

"Beautiful." Dean turns onto his side for another kiss, and Sam should say "wait, wait," but he falls into Dean's warmth instead.

* * *

At school, _The Sound and the Fury_ and the gross national product of Trinidad drift through Sam's brain without gaining much of a foothold, but he is becoming a scholar of invisibility. He moves through the halls, head down, and the other kids' gazes seem to slide right off him. Today in English, for just a moment, Miss Saunders looks his direction as if she's going to call on him, and then there's a flash of panic in her eyes, and Sam knows. She can't remember his name.

Even Constance has finally given up on him. Sam sees her walking with an apple-cheeked girl now, their heads bent together. Sometimes Constance shoots him a triumphant look. _See? Someone wants to be my friend._

On the way to third period, there's a large bulletin board, wrapped in black and red paper, the school colors, with a banner that reads: "Catch The Bruin Spirit!" Pinned to it is a collection of photographs, snapshots of the school's sports teams, marching band, and of course cheerleaders. Sam slows down every time he passes by. Right in the center is a big picture of Dean, smiling brightly after some football victory, surrounded by his celebrating teammates, Starla Ashby looking on, her expression pure calculation, how she can get closer to Dean.

Sam will think about that later, when Dean is in his bed and their bodies are pressed together and the place where Sam ends and Dean begins is beautifully blurred.

Miss Almarode drones on about Tituba and Betty Parris and mass hysteria, and Sam doodles in his notebook. He's lulled himself into believing that this pristine ordinariness is going to be the stuff his life is made of from now on. So it blindsides him when it hits, the old, familiar feeling, a shimmer at the edge of his vision, an unnatural cold in the pit of his stomach. He sucks in a breath, grips the edge of the desk, and forces the sensation back. _Please. It's supposed to be different this time._

He hangs on for the rest of class, barely, and the moment the bell rings, he's up like a shot, hurrying down the hall, ducking into the private place beneath the stairwell, his back pressed hard against the cool cinderblock wall. His lungs stay empty no matter how desperately he gasps for breath, panic rising, and the effort to hold it back, _please God_ , makes his hands clench, the long muscles of his legs tremble. The dull roar of voices and footsteps gradually dwindles, and all Sam can hear is the hammering of his pulse, like his heart is just going to beat and beat, a runaway machine, until it finally explodes.

Mr. Clifton, the assistant principal, rounds the corner to his hiding place. "Just why aren't you in class, young man?"

Sam startles and loses his grip, and the pictures barrel into him, sensation like being electrocuted, only the punch to the gut is ice instead of fire. Behind his eyes, Starla Ashby rises and falls, defying gravity, voices rising with her, _hey, hey, Bruin fans, yell it out and rock the stands_. She comes back to Earth, and for a moment, her face is all bright exhilaration. But then, she freezes, and the brightness drains away. She raises her hand, so slowly, presses it to her chest, and then she's falling again.

And so is Sam.

When he comes to, he's laid out on the table in the nurse's office, Mr. Clifton frowning at him. "You gave us a scare there, son."

"Yes, you did," Nurse Adams says in an accusatory way. She grabs his wrist, counts his pulse. "Any reason you'd go passing out on us?"

"Didn't have time for breakfast," he mumbles, not meeting her eye.

She lets out her breath in exasperation. "Well, for goodness sakes, go eat something! Young people today don't have the sense God gave them." She turns to Mr. Clifton. "He should be fine to go back to his classes after lunch."

 _It's nothing, just my imagination_ , Sam spends the rest of the day convincing himself. _I don't have to do anything about it._

At dinner, Sam's dad goes on cheerfully about the new machine he's working at the plant. Sam moves his food around on his plate, and no matter where he looks, at the Formica table top, the corn cob salt and pepper shakers, what he sees is Starla Ashby's face, as stark as an overexposed negative.

He's no less distracted later, his hands curled around Dean's shoulders as Dean moves above him.

"Hey, you okay?" Dean kisses his cheek.

He nods and closes his eyes and presses his face into the curve of Dean's throat, but even Dean can only push the pictures away so far.

That night, Sam's dream unspools like a movie, Starla falling, and the scream of the ambulance's siren, and a doctor in a white coat, shaking his head gravely. He wakes up drenched and shivering, as if he's sweating out a fever.

 _Just remember what happened the last time you tried to help_. He holds on to that thought like a get out of jail free card, walking to school and drifting through the halls and staring off into space during class.

The last place Sam and his dad called home was a small ski resort town in Vermont, named Bright Skies ironically enough, considering that the dark gun metal clouds rolled in once fall came and camped out until April at least. They lived there two whole years, like decades for other people. Sam's dad worked maintenance at the resort, keeping the ski lift running, a job he loved, tinkering with mechanical things as natural to him as breathing.

Every new town, Sam made the same resolution, to be more careful, and at first, he kept to himself, just school and home. But then, nothing happened, nothing happened, and when a girl in his English class, Martha Gamble, shyly asked one day, "have you ever thought about joining forensics," Sam forgot he was supposed to say no.

They stayed after school every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon for practice. Mrs. Crawford, the team's coach, would scribble topics on pieces of scrap paper, and they'd pull one out of a hat, fifteen minutes to prepare a speech on what the federal government could do to improve education or how the space program benefited mankind. Martha's mother would pick them up afterwards and drop Sam off, asking how their day was when they clamored into her station wagon, including Sam in the sweep of her motherly smile.

The regional forensics competition was held in McKinley every year, two towns over, and Sam's dad smiled so big and proud when Sam brought home the form for him to sign, giving permission for Sam to ride the bus with the rest of the team. It was a week before the meet when the visions started, the bus and a feeling like plunging into nothing and Martha's pale, pale face. He woke up shaking, and as soon as he got to school, he ran to Mrs. Crawford's classroom.

"There's something really important," he said, breathless and suddenly tongue-tied. "The trip to McKinley—we can't go."

Mrs. Crawford gave him a sympathetic look. "Pre-competition jitters. Happens all the time."

"No!" The heat of his insistence made Mrs. Crawford frown. "Something's going to happen. The bus—it's not safe. You've got to cancel the meet. Or postpone it. Or…something."

"That's enough foolishness." She sat up very straight, her expression stern. "I don't want to hear another word about it."

Sam had no more luck with the principal or Mr. Wheeler, the bus driver, and the rest of the kids on the forensics team just thought he'd lost his nerve. As a last ditch effort, he called Martha the night before they were supposed to go, because if he could just save _her_ …

"I'm skipping the meet," he cut right to the point. "You have to stay home, too. If you don't, you'll die. I can't say how I know. I just _know_."

She sighed audibly into the phone. "Sam, I don't know what's wrong with you, but I'm trying to focus, okay?" She hung up in his ear.

When he called back, he got Mrs. Gamble instead. "Sam, dear, I have no idea what's going on between you two, but Martha doesn't want to come to the phone. Give her a few days, and I'm sure she'll be over it."

Sam spent Saturday morning sitting next to the radio, sick with hope that just this one time he'd be wrong. Lunchtime passed, and still nothing, and Sam felt an unfamiliar fluttering in his stomach, the beginnings of relief. Then a news announcer's voice broke into _Close To You_ , and the fluttering turned to stone.

On Monday, faculty members passed out black armbands as students filed into school. No one seemed to know where to look, right at another person too much an invasion of their grief, and the halls had never been quieter. Sam stumbled to his classes in a daze. The only thing that registered was the accusatory way Mrs. Crawford kept staring at him.

It was Wednesday when the sheriff came. "I need you to ride down to the station with me, son. We've got some questions that need clearing up. Already put in a call to your father."

The interview room was small and windowless and overheated. Sam and his dad sat on one side of the table, the sheriff on the other.

The sheriff's face was calculatingly blank. "Word is from your teacher and the principal over at your school that you knew something about this bus crash before it happened."

Sam's dad shot him a look, _what were you thinking_ , as clearly as words.

Sam shrugged and stared down at his hands. "I just had a feeling."

"You had a feeling." The sheriff sat back in his chair, looking unimpressed.

It took almost two weeks for the police to conclude that the crash was caused by nothing more sinister than the Vermont winter, a treacherous patch of black ice that Mr. Wheeler hadn't seen in time to avoid. But whispering never stopped once it started, Sam knew from too much experience. His dad gave notice at the ski resort, and they packed up their stuff and moved on, like they always did.

All Sam has ever wanted is just to be normal, but no matter how hard he tries, this—whatever it is refuses to be ignored. The whole day, it's as if he's living in two places at once, the actual world with its differential equations and the big blotch of mustard on Mr. Christianson's tie, and the world behind his eyes where Starla Ashby just keeps falling and falling. Sam has long given up on easy platitudes, the notion that things happen for a reason, but he has the certainty of any fate's pawn that some things just _have_ to be, as inevitable as the daily up and down of the sun, whether anybody likes it or not.

After school, Starla is standing at her locker at the end of the hall, and step by slow step, Sam gives in to that inevitability. He waits for her to notice him there, shifting his weight awkwardly. She looks up at last. "What do you want?" She narrows her eyes. "Who are you?"

"My name's Sam," he mumbles. "I wanted to say—maybe you should go to the doctor, you know? Get checked out and everything?"

She stares at him, her eyes taking on a hard shine. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Just—something could be wrong, and you might not even know it."

"Is that a threat?" she asks, crossing her arms over her chest.

He shakes his head frantically. "No, no, I just—"

"Because, just so you know, that would be a big mistake." She walks off with a toss of her hair.

At home, Sam mumbles his way through dinner, not able to look his father in the eye, because how many times has he promised? _I won't tell anyone. I'll be careful._ He's not even thinking about Dean, so when he opens the door to his room and there Dean is, standing by the window, warmth flares in his chest, a fragile hope, like maybe something good can still happen.

Then Dean turns around, and Sam's hope sinks.

"What the hell was that with Starla?" Dean's jaw is clenched. "Were you trying to scare the shit out of her?"

"No! I just—" Sam wants so much to explain.

But Dean isn't in any mood to listen. "I told you how it was going to be with us, and you have to go and pull this jealous bullshit?"

"It has nothing to do with you," Sam insists. "Starla's in trouble. You've got to talk to her, get her to go to the hospital or the doctor or something."

Dean stares at him. "You're one crazy bitch, aren't you?"

"Please! You've got to believe me," Sam's voice is broken and begging, and it does no good whatsoever.

"Stay away from her. I'm serious." Dean starts out the window and then stops, his eyes so bright with betrayal that Sam has to look away. "We had a good thing. Why'd you have to go and ruin it?"

* * *

When Starla falls, Sam isn't there to see it. His Bruin spirit isn't what it could be, and he makes a habit of sneaking off to the library during pep rallies. He hears about it later; it's all anyone is talking about. How everything seemed fine, and the cheerleaders were going through their routine, and then Starla was grabbing at her chest, and the ambulance came and took her away.

Every day, Sam goes to school braced for the worst, but no one pays any more attention to him than ever. There's whispering everywhere, worst-case scenarios and wild rumors about Starla's condition, and then word comes that she's going to be fine, able to start back to school in a few weeks. The whispering evaporates. Life goes on.

Occasionally, when Sam's heading to class or sitting in the library, he'll feel like his skin is burning, a hot place between his shoulder blades or on the back of his neck. When he looks around, unnerved, he finds Dean staring, eyes narrowed as if he's trying to dissect Sam with his mind.

Sam doesn't hear anything more about Starla Ashby's return to school. Just one morning he comes trudging through the big front door, and there she is, looking a little paler but otherwise okay, surrounded by admirers, smiling and tossing her hair. "So, did you miss me?"

He's not sure what to expect, and for days, there's nothing. No accusatory stares, no whispers of "bitch" hissed in his direction. The only time Sam sees Starla is when he catches a glimpse of her in the hall. He starts to consider a novel possibility, that maybe this time will be different. Maybe Starla Ashby of all people will be the one to finally understand.

This feeble optimism gets upended the afternoon he closes the door to his locker, and Starla is standing there.

"I hope you're happy," she says, so hatefully Sam is surprised the words don't cut him.

He darts a desperate glance around, but apparently she's chosen her moment. There's no one to overhear.

"The doctor says I have a heart arrhythmia," Starla tells him. "I had to quit the squad. Congratulations. That is what you wanted, isn't it? To ruin everything for me."

He shakes his head. "I was just trying to warn you—"

Her expression twists into something ugly. "You _made_ this happen."

"No!" He can barely breathe. "I wanted you to get help. I thought you were going to die."

"Well, I didn't." She crowds him, so close he can feel the furious rush of her breath. "Now, I'm going to warn _you_. Nobody messes with me and gets away with it. _Nobody_."

It starts the next day. He walks into first period, and every set of eyes in the room pins him to the spot. The heat rises in Sam's cheeks, and he ducks his head, hair falling into his face, the only defense he has. He hurries to his desk, but when he sits down, someone kicks the chair out from under him, and he spills onto the floor.

At the clatter, Miss Wimbley whirls around from the blackboard. "Mr. Winchester, is there a problem?"

He shakes his head, pulling himself up, righting the chair. "I just fell."

The laughter is loud and mean.

In the halls, whispering follows him wherever he goes, a live wire of insinuation. _Do you know what they're saying about him? Did you hear what he did to Starla?_

At home, he jumps every time the phone rings. It's always a different voice, always disguised, never Dean's, at least as far as Sam can tell, for whatever that's worth. _You fucking evil piece of shit. You're going to get what's coming to you._ When Sam's dad is around, Sam has to nod and murmur "mm-hmm," like it's just any old high school conversation, some friend rattling on about homework and movie stars and who likes who.

"That's an awful lot of calls lately." His dad gets a twinkle in his eye. "Somebody special, Sammy?"

The point of no return comes two days later. Sam returns to his locker after classes, and the word "witch" is scrawled across it in what looks like blood. He opens the door, and wet red drenches everything, his books and papers and jacket. It spills out onto the floor and pools at his feet, getting all over his shoes. The hallway is jammed with kids, like they knew what was coming. There's silence and staring, and Sam's heart pounds so hard he thinks he's going to be sick.

He runs all the way home, his lungs burning and empty. He slides the suitcase out from under his bed and starts wildly throwing things into it. When he hears the front door, he races downstairs. "Dad, there's something I need to—"

"Sammy! You won't believe what happened." His father's face is alive with happiness, and God, Sam can't remember the last time he saw that. "The new line supervisor down at the plant? You're looking at him!"

"Wow," Sam mumbles and goes to hug his dad, holding on too tight. "That's great."

His father nods. "It means a big bump in pay, baby. We can afford some new things around here. A bigger TV. Maybe even a real vacation for a change." He grins a little sheepishly. "But look at me getting all carried away. What were you going to say? There was something you needed?"

"To tell you," Sam stumbles over the words, and then…he just can't do it. "I forgot to make supper, but we should go out and celebrate anyway."

"Sammy?" His dad hesitates. "You're still doing okay at school and everything, aren't you?"

"Yeah, Dad," Sam lies numbly.

His dad brushes a lock of hair back from his cheek. "Your mom would be so proud of you, you know that?"

When they come home from pizza at Gino's, the phone is ringing, and Sam races up the steps. "I'll get it in my room."

"Please stop," he blurts out before the person has a chance to start up the usual litany.

"Sam?"

He sinks down onto the edge of his bed, like there's no air in his body. "Dean?"

"About what happened today—that wasn't right. I told those guys not to—look, Sam, I'm sorry, okay? I shouldn't have jumped to conclusions like I did." Dean is halting and maybe a little guilty, and Sam holds onto the phone tighter. "I should have listened to what you had to say. Come meet me so we can talk?"

"You can come here," he says, want rushing through him so hot and electric it leaves him trembling.

Dean's voice drops an octave, low and intimate, "If I come there, we won't talk. You know we won't. The orchard? Twenty minutes?"

It isn't hard to sneak out. Sam's dad falls asleep in front of the television every night, has since Sam's mom died. The orchard juts up against their yard, and Sam goes out the back gate. Dean is already waiting.

"Hey." Sam leans in for a kiss.

Dean turns his cheek. "Not here. Come on. I know a place."

He leads Sam deeper into the orchard. Twigs snap beneath their feet, and the trees grow thicker, and it seems to get darker with every step.

"Isn't this far enough?"

"Almost there," Dean tells him.

Sam pushes through some branches, and something hits him hard, right across the temple. Pain makes his vision go brilliantly red, just for a second, and then everything runs black.

Awareness returns slowly, fragmented and confusing. His eyes won't focus right, but he can feel the press of bodies, hear low murmuring, _what are we going to do, maybe we shouldn't_ , and then Starla Ashby's voice breaks through with bell-like clarity, "He tried to kill me!"

Hands pull at him, and Sam calls out for Dean, but his voice gets lost in the confusion. He flails and tries to break free and desperately looks around for Dean, but there are just shadowy faces in the dark, kids Sam has probably passed in the halls at school a hundred times. They swarm around, pressing closer. Someone yanks him hard by the hair and pushes something over his head. He feels the rough bite of hemp against his neck, and for a second, there's cold shock, and then he's scratching and kicking and struggling for all he's worth.

They keep coming anyway, wrenching his arms, trying to hoist him up.

Starla's voice rings out, "This is what happens to witches!"

"Dean!"

He fights blindly, grappling and punching, the blood singing violently in his head.

"Dean, help me!"

He twists and thrashes and finally catches sight of Dean. He's standing shoulder to shoulder with Starla, his expression primitive, determined, like something carved into stone, his hands on Sam as relentless as judgment, pushing and pushing.

Sam has never had a vision about himself, but in this split second, his sight turns inward. He can see his life, every moment, every action, like threads, all intertwined and leading to this, as inevitable as dust. The fight, the very air, goes out of him. Then he's rising, up and up, on their shoulders, their hands, voices rising along with him. One last thought, desperately clear, goes around and around his head, even as he's falling:

_This is what love does to you. This is how it always ends._

The wood floor was hard beneath Sam's back, and darkness swirled over him, like being deep underwater, just a pinpoint of light left, small and getting smaller. He pushed and fought his way toward it, and finally his eyes snapped open, his lungs clenched and burning. Dean knelt over him, hands clamped to the belt wrapped around Sam's neck, pulling tighter and tighter, somebody else looking out from behind his eyes.

Sam struggled to get a hand between leather and skin, wanting to beg, "Stop!" But there was no air and no voice, and he grappled at Dean's chest, trying to shove him away. _Dean!_ he screamed in his thoughts, and at last he managed to get the sound out, broken and rusty.

Dean's hands went slack, and he blinked, confused for a moment and then quickly horrified. "Shit! Sam!" He whipped the belt off, threw it halfway across the room. "Sam." Dean pulled him into his arms, hands smoothing over his back.

Sam rested his head against Dean's shoulder, gulping down air.

"God, Sammy." Dean's fingers threaded through his hair. "I'm so—"

Sam shook his head, cheek brushing against Dean's. _Not your fault._

"Come on. Let's get the fuck out of here." Dean hoisted Sam up onto his feet, led him outside, and set him down on the curb by the car.

"It's cursed," Sam's voice came out a raw whisper. "You have to—"

Dean was already moving around to the trunk. He toted away the gas can and strode purposefully back into the house.

It was quiet on the block, no traffic, no one out in their yards. Sam gingerly held a hand to his throat and tried swallowing, not all that successfully. Maybe his sense of time was screwed up, but it felt like he waited forever for his brother to come back. When orange started to glow in an upstairs window and Dean still hadn't reappeared, he lurched to his feet and headed up the front walk.

Dean came rushing out. "Let's get the hell out of here."

In the rearview mirror, Sam watched the smoke starting to rise, and if he closed his eyes, he could picture flames licking across wooden floors and wallpaper and time itself, all heat and ferocity. It made him shiver with cold.

* * *

"Didn't I say once _before_ to let this go?" Dean complained across three states.

"I just need to do this."

Sam turned his head toward Dean, earnest and insistent and _please_ , the surest way to convince his brother of anything. Dean's eyes held his maybe a second before sliding down to the ugly red creases cutting deep across his throat, the brilliantly mottled bruises. Then he looked sharply away.

"Dean," Sam said softly. _You have to let that go._ He'd spent the last two nights pressed close to Dean in bed, trying to convince him with the brush of lips, clench of arms, the silent language of his hands.

Olsen, North Dakota had a sedimentary look to it, as if some long forgotten river deposited it there, layer by layer. They stopped at the first gas station in town and asked the way to Leo Brewster's house.

On the other side of town, they turned down a long, dusty driveway, and at the end of it stood a dingy shingled box, the kind of place that screamed _only temporary_ long after it had become permanent.

"You sure?" Dean kept his hands on the steering wheel, just in case.

Sam unfolded himself from the car. "I'll be a minute."

There was a picture of Mr. Brewster in Sam's head, and when he opened the screened door, the man himself filled that imaginary outline, just a little grayer and more stooped.

"Mr. Brewster? I'm here about," the words threatened to stick in Sam's throat, "your daughter."

Mr. Brewster looked him up and down. "You'll want a cup of coffee," he said at last. "Come on back to the kitchen."

Sam took a seat at the table while Mr. Brewster saw to the percolator.

"You take milk or sugar?"

Sam shook his head, and Mr. Brewster set down two mugs of steaming black coffee. "So, you've seen her, have you?"

Sam went still with surprise. "Something like that."

Mr. Brewster studied Sam thoughtfully. "You're like my Laura. I can tell."

Sam stared down at his hands wrapped around the mug. "I just wanted you to know—your daughter didn't kill herself." He glanced up, and Mr. Brewster's gaze held steady. "But you already knew that."

Mr. Brewster took a sip of his coffee. "Laura's mamma passed way too young. Cancer. After that, it was just Laura and me. She never would have gone off and left me by myself, not of her own free will. But even if I hadn't known that in my heart, three days after they found her, that boy down the block, Billy Taylor, went and shot himself in the head. I didn't figure that was any coincidence."

"Do you have—" Sam struggled to find the right words. "I'd like to know Laura better."

Mr. Brewster nodded, as if he understood. "I'll get you something."

He came back with a high school yearbook and opened it up to Laura's picture. She had soft honey-colored hair, a sweet smile, and a bit of a lost look in her eyes. There was a simple "in memoriam" beneath her name. Sam flipped pages and stopped at a spread dedicated to Billy Taylor, a cold prickle on the back of his neck.

In the center was the same picture from the dream, or delusion, or whatever they'd gotten caught up in, Billy Taylor in his football uniform, surrounded by his teammates, on top of the world, and Starla Ashby watching him, like he was all she could see. There was no resemblance to Dean at all. This boy had messy black hair and dark eyes; he was square-jawed and gangling. But the more Sam stared, the more the face kept blurring, so that Dean was all he could see.

He snapped the yearbook resolutely shut.

"It wasn't just Billy Taylor," Sam said, his voice surprisingly even.

Mr. Brewster looked off into space, as if he were staring down the long, dusty length of history. "I moved away after my Laura died, just as soon as I could sell the house. Bounced around from place to place, and finally ended up here, working for a trucking company. Seemed like however far I ran, though, I never could get away. Wyatteville, of all places, was on my route, you see."

He looked Sam square in the eye, and his expression had layers, too.

"I'd stop in at this diner whenever I was over Wyatteville way," Mr. Brewster continued on, "and the lady who ran the place, Connie, Lord how she loved to talk. She didn't know who I was, but that didn't stop her from jabbering on about all the people she went to high school with. I'd sit there and eat my pie and hear the stories of their divorces and bankruptcies, how they were fighting cancer or sitting up in Joliet doing five to ten, and I'd think: Good. _Good_. I hope what you did to my Laura ruins you all."

Mr. Brewster's voice rang in the room even after he'd stopped, and there was nothing left to do but finish their coffee, the seconds ticking by loudly on the clock hanging over the stove.

At last, Sam got up to go. "Thank you for showing me your daughter."

Mr. Brewster walked him to the door. "You got somebody looking out for you?"

"Yeah." Sam swallowed around the sudden tightness in his throat. _I just don't know for how much longer_.

"This world's filled with people who don't like what they can't understand." Mr. Brewster frowned softly. "You be careful."

"Yes, sir. I will," Sam promised.

Dean was pacing by the side of the Impala and went still when he saw Sam. "Okay?"

Sam nodded, and Dean nodded back, and all that was left was to get in the car and get on the road and put it all behind them.

The miles started to unspool, and the sun slid past the horizon, and Sam wasn't expecting to tell Dean anything. It just came tumbling out, "Her father said Laura was like me."

Whatever Dean's reaction, it was neatly camouflaged in casual speculation, "Old yellow eyes did mention other generations. You think—"

Sam shook his head. "I don't know. Maybe. Or witchcraft can be hereditary. Maybe it ran in her family, and after her mother died, there wasn't anybody to explain it to Laura."

"I still don't get why the curse was a murder-suicide thing."

"Billy Taylor, the boy who—he shot himself three days after."

"Son of a bitch saved me the trouble," Dean said under his breath.

Sam stared out the window, Laura's last moments swimming up from the pool of things he'd rather forget. "She didn't do it on purpose. Laying that curse. She was just scared, and she didn't know her power." He added more softly, "She didn't know what she was."

" _He_ should have known," Dean insisted vehemently. "That she wasn't—"

"Evil?"

Their eyes met for a moment, and then Dean's slid away, and he wouldn't look back again.

"So—" Dean took a long breath. "What've you got for me?" He nodded toward the glove box where Sam's research was stashed.

There was never anything subtle about Dean's efforts to change the subject, and just this once, maybe Sam was glad for it.

"Well." He sorted through his papers. "Looks like we've got a Woman in White haunting McKannesville, a small sheep-farming town in Nebraska."

Dean shot him an exasperated look. "What part of 'sunny' do you not get?"

"Okay, okay." Sam flipped through some more pages. "How does a succubus in Ft. Lauderdale sound?"

"Like a plan." Dean turned the wheel hard, another rubber-burning about face.

Sam sighed heavily.

Dean grinned. "Florida's the other way, Sammy."


End file.
